The “Dutch Donald Trump” Loses

When Trump talks about Europe, it tends to be as a land of his own imagining. Last week, the real Europe fell out of step with him.

“Is there anything typically German about you?” Donald Trump was asked in January, during an interview with European journalists about his immigrant forebears. He answered, “I like things done in an orderly manner. And, certainly, the Germans, that’s something that they’re rather well known for.” As often with Trump’s comments, it was hard to distinguish historical insensitivity from personal obliviousness—given the complete disorder of his Administration—and heedless stereotyping. (He added, in reference to his mother, who was born in Scotland, “The Scottish are known for watching their pennies. . . . I deal in big pennies.”) When Trump talks about Europe, it tends to be as a land of his own imagining: a once terrific place brought low by NATO deadbeats and so wrecked by immigration-related disasters that no one wants to visit anymore; its discontent a harbinger of his success and proof of his perspicacity. Last week, however, the real Europe fell out of step with Trump.

On Wednesday, the Dutch held an election in which the center-right Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, was pitted against Geert Wilders, a right-wing extremist whose oddly constructed blond pompadour is the least baneful of his resemblances to Trump. Wilders had called for shutting mosques, banning the Koran, closing the Netherlands’ borders to Muslims, and levying a tax on women who wear head scarves in public. Owing to the fragmented state of Dutch politics—twenty-eight parties were on the ballot—he had a shot at gaining a plurality, an outcome that would have given momentum to others on Europe’s far right, including Marine Le Pen, who will face French voters in the Presidential election next month, as well as the German extremists who will challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in the fall.

The fear was that, after a near-miss in Austria, three months ago, the Continent was emulating Trump and reverting to its basest image of itself and of others. In fact, Europe’s current populist-nationalist movements predate Trump’s ascendance, and, at times, it isn’t clear who is nurturing whom. Wilders, for example, was a featured speaker at a 2010 rally in New York, protesting the construction of an Islamic community facility near the World Trade Center site, and he has since written for Breitbart News. Representative Steve King, the Iowa Republican, was praising Wilders when he remarked, earlier this month, that Western civilization could not be saved by “somebody else’s babies.”

Two days before the Dutch election, in a televised debate, Wilders railed against the “liars” and the “givers-away” who “don’t allow the Netherlands to be the Netherlands anymore.” Rutte agreed that immigration was an issue, but charged that Wilders’s proposals were “fake,” and added, “That’s the difference between tweeting from your couch and governing the country.” That line, which dominated the next day’s headlines, was one that Hillary Clinton might have used; in Rutte’s case, it seems to have worked. With a record eighty-two-per-cent voter turnout, his party won thirty-three seats out of a hundred and fifty, leaving Wilders in second place, with twenty. Many young, first-time voters supported the GreenLeft Party, which won fourteen seats—up from just four in the previous election—under the leadership of Jesse Klaver, who is thirty years old and exhorted crowds to stand by their principles.

The celebrations were tempered, though, by the way that Rutte had pandered to the right. One of his campaign ads told immigrants, “Be normal or get out,” and he warned that, with Wilders, the “wrong kind of populism” would take hold, begging the question of what the right kind might be. This is a temptation that many European politicians share with the leaders of the G.O.P.: how Trump-like are they willing to appear in the interest of winning over voters? In the event, Rutte’s party did worse in this election than it did in the last one, and it will probably rely on insurgent pro-Europe leftist parties to form a coalition. François Fillon, France’s center-right Presidential candidate, tried a tactic similar to Rutte’s, only to be derailed by a classically French corruption scandal involving, among other things, expensive suits. If the polls hold, Emmanuel Macron, who is essentially running as an independent, will be the mainstream alternative to Le Pen in a runoff, in May. At a moment of partisan upheaval and realignment, the future is not likely to belong to those who do little more than triangulate.

Europe may also be taking note of the backlash in this country to Trump’s xenophobic policies. On the same day that Wilders was defeated, a judge in Hawaii issued a temporary restraining order halting Trump’s latest travel ban, on the ground that its legal language was simply a cover for discriminating against Muslims. Still, European anti-Trump sentiment possesses, as yet, a certain ideological incoherence. Last week, after Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, called for a new referendum on Scottish independence she took to Twitter to boast about the numerical superiority of her electoral mandate to that of Theresa May, the British Prime Minister. In response, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, tweeted, “Someone’s gone the full Donald Trump.” It is May, though, who is leading Britain out of Europe—a process advanced by Parliament last week. More than a million Britons signed a petition berating her for inviting Trump for a state visit, which would entail the national mortification of seeing him presented to the Queen. (Sean Spicer’s accusation, during a White House press briefing, that British spies had helped President Obama wiretap Trump didn’t help matters.) But such gestures mean little in the absence of a clear European voice speaking out against what Trump stands for.

The closest the Continent has to that is Angela Merkel, who arrived in Washington last Friday. During the campaign, Trump said that Merkel, with her humane approach to refugees, was “ruining” her country, and that “the German people are going to end up overthrowing this woman.” At a joint press conference, when a reporter asked Merkel what she thought of Trump’s “style” she politely made a broader point: “People are different, people have different abilities, have different characteristics, traits of character, have different origins, have found their way to politics along different pathways—well, that is diversity, which is good.” As she finished speaking, she turned and nodded at Trump, with a smile, trying, perhaps, to discern just what about him might be typically American. ♦

An earlier version of this article misstated the nature of a proposed building project near the World Trade Center site.

This article appears in the print edition of the March 27, 2017, issue, with the headline “Eurotrump.”

Amy Davidson Sorkin, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a regular contributor to Comment for the magazine and writes a Web column in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.